The thing that these chapters had in common was that they talked about assessments and how to record assignments on report cards and in a grade book. Chapter 11 introduced the concept of recording 60s in the grade book for missing work instead of zeros which is currently the norm. The reason that we should do this as teachers is because recording zeros make grades inaccurate. The zero also distorts the final grade since a zero is so devastating. The book as that it isn't cheating since you are still recording an F. It is also better to change it to a 60 especially if it happens only once or in the beginning of the grading period since we should be grading on a trend. This chapter also talks about grading gifted students. In this chapter I learned that the higher grade should always be recorded. A high grade should mean that they mastered the regular level and the advanced level material. If the teacher records the higher grade there should be a comment saying if this grade is for the regular level or the advanced level. If it is for the regular level then a grade for the advanced level should be left in the comment section. If a student is in an honors class then it is best for a teacher to record the grade that goes against the higher standards even if it is not the higher grade. The last thing that I learned from this chapter is about recording grades for late work. What the teacher records as the grade should depend on whether it is occasional or chronic. If a student always hands in work on time then the teacher should work with the student and let the student turn in the work without deducting points. If it is always occurring then a late penalty may be needed. However, in this case the teacher should record one grade for the mastery and another grade with the late penalties. Chapter 12 talked about the difference between the 100 - point scale and the 4.0 - scale. I learned that the smaller the scale the more alike the grade is between teachers and schools. The point values on smaller grading scales are also more directly correlated to the defined criteria and they provide better feedback. Teacher are also less likely to fudge the numbers with small grading scales. I learned that larger scales are more subjective than smaller grading scales. Chapter 13 talked about different ways to organize a grade book. One of the ways was to group assignments by standards, objectives, or benchmarks which means the teacher would have to record the grade more than once if it covered more than one standard. Another way was to list the assignments by dates which I thought would be most useful. Chapter 14 talked about report card formats. The main thing that I got out of this chapter was that the report cards should be responsive to students' experiences and they should reflect the differentiated practices that were provided by the teacher.
Katelin
Grading is a concept that is really hard for many and I believe it will be hard for me in my classroom to know what is really the best way to grade a student and how to be the best I can at it. The chapters made the point that we differentiate in teaching the class, so why should we not differentiate in gradebooks? This was never really a way that I looked at grading, but I do believe that it makes sense to think this way. To me, I never saw much of a problem with putting a 0 in for an assignment in classes because it makes sense. How could I ever argue with a teacher when I was in school for giving me a zero on an assignment if I did not do it? Yes, it was hard to fight with zeros in the grade book because it brought your grade down, but I had not done it so I thought it was just a consequence. After reading this though it does make sense that a student should not get zero because it really does not represent their overall grade in the end. It poses the question though, what is the best grade to give them then? If a student does an assignment and does really poorly on it to earn the grade of a 60, why should the student who did not even pass it in earn a 60 also? That just does not make sense. I do think that I will come up with a system to try not to put zeros in the grade book though and not deducting so much for a late assignment because of the same reasons. I want the student to complete the work, not think it does not count because it is two weeks late, because it does. Rubrics are nice and all, and I understand why teachers like them so much, but I feel like students can lose points easily on a rubric and not get partial credit for some things. I like the idea of having a grade book that was grading by date to see the growth in students though. I believe it is important to remember where students start and end, because if they are not growing, there is something else happening we should be worried about.
Shane
Chapter 11 of FIAE discusses common grading issues that many teachers go through in life. This pertains to my life as a future educator because teachers are going to have different ways of grading. Some students may be more gifted than others and if they don’t pass in work they should still be held to the same standards as others. I think as teachers we will need to keep an open mind when it comes to grading. I will end up holding kids to a high standard and just asking them to communicate with me. I think that we can make this clear in the syllabus and expectations. The other concepts would a grade point scale whether it’s a 100-point scale or if we use letter grades. One thing I can relate from the field with the FIAE readings would be hitting the standards. With my mentor we have talked about project based learning and different grading styles. This is not like effort based grading, which is a different story. The other thing the reading mentions is how to differentiated depending on the classroom. One last really good point I read and agreed with and have seen is staying on top of grades. I think as a student it is so frustrating to not know your grade until last minute. As a teacher if you put your grades in powerschool or the gradebook ASAP to avoid surprises and let the kids take initiative to get better. If they are willing to put in the work and get their grades up it shows who actually cares and who doesn’t. Being organized the better as a teacher. The last really important part of the reading I feel would be the 4 point scale. Often times you hear of it as GPA, but it is cropping up in other classes.
Dominick
The overarching theme with all of these chapters was grading. Chapter 11 delves into the multiple problems that arise when trying to grade students work. The paramount here is how to grade late work. The chapter brings up two different ideas: one being giving the student a 60 and the other being a 0. Let me tell you why it is unreasonable to give a student a 0. Zeroes kill grades. If a student is about to make honor roll and accidentally slips up and forgets to do an assignment and that teacher goes on to give that student a zero dropping his/her grade to a C then the student will not make honor roll. Opposed to the other scenario of giving the student a 60 where the student then ends up with a B-. It's flat out unfair to give that student a zero because he/she forgot about it. Me personally I would probably have a different late policy: one that will allow students to lose somewhere between 5 and 10 points everyday. Grades are not black and white, the whole system is a gray area. Rick Wormeli brings up another point that really caught my interest and that's to do away with grades A, B, C, D, F and doing 1-4. I am sorry, but I do not agree with this at all. These letters give the student an idea of how they did in the class, where they need to improve and so on: there is no confusion. I appreciate Wormeli's innovative thinking, but I must say that I flat out disagree here. Chapter 14 brings forth another radical idea regarding the use of report cards. Wormeli suggests that it might be a good idea to change up the whole system by only having one report card for the year. This is an interesting idea once again, but one that I am not in favor of. Students need to know how they are doing throughout the whole course of the year that way they know what subjects they need to improve on.
Laura
All four of these chapters provided very useful insight to the grading process and policy that I may not have considered had I not read them. For example, I always thought that a zero was a zero and that it had the same effect in the gradebook as any other failing grade, because an F is an F. Maybe I thought this because I’m simply not a math person and my brain just doesn’t think in terms of averages and numbers and all that, or because I had so many teachers that said an incomplete assignment equaled a zero. I thought that giving a zero for a missing assignment made sense because zero stands for nothing: there was no assignment handed in. BUT, after reading Chapter 11 I can totally see how giving a zero for an incomplete assignment could really mess up a kid’s final grade and skew his level of mastery. In my classroom, I won’t give out zeros for this reason—grades should always indicate mastery, otherwise the evaluation we give our students is inaccurate. I do, however, feel that including comments on report cards is extremely necessary, because it is important to take things like effort, timeliness, and completion rate into consideration. If a student knows that homework isn’t graded in any way shape or form, they are less likely to take it seriously. For this reason, I will include a separate grading criteria beyond mastery when I am assessing my students. I will also try to use a smaller grading scale whenever possible, as suggested in Chapter 12, because it is more useful and can provide better feedback. In terms of the different types of gradebook formats presented in Chapter 13, I personally liked the format that grades according to standards. Not only are standards becoming more prominent in schools, I think that this format allows more specificity to student mastery and are therefore more useful, insightful, and less subjective than categorizing mastery based on assessment type. Of course, I understand that this format will not work all the time, and it is important to be flexible and tailor gradebook formats to student needs and course objectives. (I also really liked the topics-based gradebook approach because it connects topic to assignments and is quite specific.) In terms of report card formats, I simply couldn’t decide which I liked best; I think it will depend on my students and the school I am teaching in.
Rhi
Chapters 11-14 in FIAE largely focus on grading in the classroom. There are several methods that are suggested to influence your grading, but one that really stood out to me was using a 60 in place of anything below a 60. I don’t think there is any benefit in a student knowing they scored lower than a 60 on an assignment. Failing is failing, and maybe instead of writing the students 32 on the test, write them a note to meet with you. Another method is grading by weight of assignment, not by numbers. For example, an essay would carry more grading weight than a quick write homework assignment. So if a student misses the textbook assignment, that failed grade does not impact in the same way a missed essay does. This is how most of my teachers graded our work throughout high school and has been carried on throughout my college years, so I would definitely like to keep this method within my future classes.
I feel grading is a very important topic to discuss in a classroom. It is also important to keep students in the loop about their grades. Why they receive certain grades, how they can improve, where their strengths and weaknesses are, etc. There are so many different aspects to grading, late work, weighted grades, deductions, grade books/keeping track of grades, and other aspects that I do not yet know but will soon need to consider. I think that at the end of the day, an assignment should be graded more on its content than it’s ability to follow guidelines, although that has importance as well. I think that students should be focused on understanding the content and completing the assignment, than completing the technicalities of an assignment. I think this has a lot to do with why students do work for the grade and not to understand the material. If students had less guidelines and put more effort into making quality work that showed mastery, we’d have students who are better off with their learning. I would much rather have paper that is 2 pages shy of a length requirement with quality thought and full of content, than a paper that is the required length but says nothing of importance to what the class had been learning. Students and teachers are too focused on quantitative information, than qualitative. Both want to know how to grade an assignment and what the final grades will be, rather than understanding the information being presented.
Cory
All of these chapters talked about grading, but each with their own spin on it. Chapter 11 talked about the main issues that teachers face when they think about grading. Chapter 12 talked about different kinds of scales teachers use to grade their students. Chapter 13 talked about the different kinds of grade books that a differentiated classroom can use. Finally, chapter 14 focused on the different kinds of report cards schools can use instead of the traditional one. There were quite a few points in these chapters that were very debatable; the information was either hit or miss for me. One of the biggest misses came from chapter 11. Here the author talked about giving 60’s instead of 0’s. I understand what they are saying; they should give 60’s because it more accurately reflects the student’s actual grade. It also matches the 10 or 11 point scale of the A’s, B’s, and C’s. But I personally don’t agree with this. Students shouldn’t be given credit for an assignment that they never completed, which is why a zero is appropriate. If you give them a 60, then they are more likely to not do their assignment because there are fewer repercussions. But my biggest issue with this stems back to the fact that they can’t get credit for something they never completed; if they didn’t do it, then they have shown no mastery, whether or not that mastery of the topic is actually there. But there were some cool ideas that the author put forward that I really liked. For example, I liked some of the grade book ideas, especially listing the assignment by date and time. For me, my mind tends to think very chronologically. I may seem to be very unorganized, but I see the pattern that I leave my stuff in, and it generally is based on when I put it in the folder or in the pile. I remember the order in which I put something there, and based on that I can easily find when others seem to be confused by it. This is probably rather similar to the gradebook I would like using in my classroom.
Cooper
The final 4 chapters of Fair Isn’t Always Equal focus on grading and some of the issues that come up in grading. The issue I found the most interesting was the prospect of putting a sixty into the gradebook rather than a zero for incompleted work. This is something I think we all as students have run into one time or another. The difference between not doing an assignment at all and doing a poor enough job to fail an assignment is astronomical in terms of grading and that can be extremely damaging to a student. For example a student could complete an assignment and earn a 100 and show a true mastery of a subject then fail to turn in the next assignment and earn a 0 giving him or her an average of 50 which on the surface would indicate that the student does not understand the material. Conversely a student could fail both assignments with 60s on each and earn a better average than the student who showed mastery of the concepts. While there is something to be said about being able to show the initiative to complete assignments on time, this type of system isn’t set up to reflect understanding and that can certainly be problematic. One of the chapters proposes a smaller grading scale and I think that is definitely one solution to this problem. In a traditional grading scale (0-100) there is a 11 or 10 point margin for each passing letter grade while there is a 60 point margin for failing grades. When the margin for failure is this large of course that will be reflected in student’s grades especially when a zero is entered into the gradebook as it 60% away from passing. Making the scale smaller helps to relieve these sorts of issues if there is a 1-5 scale where a 5 is an ‘A’ and a 1 is a ‘F’ we see a much more appropriate relationship between mastery and grade. I think conceptually we have to move away from the idea of failing at varying degrees, if as instructors we feel comfortable saying a student failed to understand the material they should receive a ‘F’ but to say that the majority of a 1-100 scale should represent different ways of failing not only sends the wrong message but it also interferes with the grading system as a whole.
Sara
In these chapters the main focus is grading. From what we grade, how we grade and why we grade. In chapter 11 we look at the big controversy between giving students a 0 or a 60. Before reading this chapter I never really understood why and how a student received a 60 if they did not do the work. It seemed not fair to students who try and did not represent how they students are actually doing. After reading the chapter I now feel the opposite as I did before reading the chapter. Especially after seeing the math and looking at different scenarios I can see why it makes sense for a teacher to give a student a 60 instead of a 0. If the other letter grades only span 11 points, why should a failing grading spread 50 or 60 points? If a student receives a 60 or 0, in terms of the letter grade, what is the difference? The answer is there is none. Bother grades would be an F and without the number value attached we would have no way of know which score the student received. When averaging how the student has done over a time period it seems fair to put in a 60 rather than a 0.
When reading about grading scales and gradebooks I found myself thinking about how my mentor teacher did things in his classroom. He did use a grading scale out of 100, test and quizzes were graded independently but were then turned into percentage out of 100. I think in my classroom I will do something similar. It seems an appropriate way to grade things and the most logical. As for the gradebook I think I will divide things up by lesson topic, but also by standard. Lesson topic will allow me to look at the lesson as a whole and see how the student did with the topic. Dividing it by lesson will also make it easy to divide it by standard. This will make it easy to communicate with administration, parents, and the student, on what the student needs to work on in the class.
Lydia
These four Chapters are based on how a teacher should grade and what is a fair way to grade in a differentiated way. It is not always fair to give students letter grades or grade on a 4.0 scale because it doesn’t show how the student progressed throughout the quarter or even throughout the school year. The book also discusses if it is fair to give a zero or can you just give a student a sixty because they are both considered to be an F in the grade book. This will not show their true potential and growth because the zero will make it hard for the student to raise their grade even if they are getting better grades the rest of the year. It is not fair to penalize a student for the whole year when they have only gotten a zero on one assignment. This will affect students in the classroom because they will feel like it could be too hard to bring the grade up. By getting discouraged the student could shut down and choose not to do any more homework for the rest of the quarter or even the rest of the year. Also mentioned was grading scales and what is fair to use when using a grading scale and are number grades a poor way to show if a student is getting an A or an F. The number grade could show them that they are so close to getting a higher grade that the students could ask the teacher if there is any way to change it. This will affect me because it shows that the teacher should not be focused on the number of points that they get however I should focus on how the student did to improve from the last lesson or assessment. This also is reflected in the student’s report card which makes parents want to compare their child to another child in the class. Because of the number grading system parents want an easy to look at grade of how their child is doing. They typically don’t think about how their child has improved over the course of the class they mainly focus on if they are better than someone else in the class. It isn’t fair for the student or the teacher to have to be restricted to letter and number grades.
Cheyenne
These chapters focused on grading scales and differentiation in gradebooks. There is a huge problem in the way many teachers are recording their grades, that results in the grades not being accurate to student mastery or progress. A big focus in chapter 11 is the concept of replacing zeros with 60s. Zeros are such a devastating grade when used on a 100 point scale, that when an A student doesn’t do a single assignment, the zero will being their entire final grade down almost two letter grades. This is not an accurate representation of their level of mastery, whereas changing the zero to a 60 would be a much more accurate representation. This is not cheating, as some people would suggest, because a 60 is still a failing grade. If a student routinely does not do their work, they will still receive and F. But substituting zeros for 60s results in a far less devastating grade drop to those students that do their work.
That being said, these chapters also discussed how the 100 point scale is inherently flawed. The current 100 point scale that is being used in most places gives A-D only 10 points per letter grade, and 60 points for an F. That’s over half a chance of getting an F, and it’s extremely skewed. Chapter 12 suggests that a smaller grading scale, such as the 4.0 scale is a better representation of students’ mastery. There is a warning, though, that parents and students might not understand why a 4.0 scale is better. It is too easy to associate each number with a letter grade and parents and students might wonder why a teacher wouldn’t just put down the associated letter grade. But these smaller grading scales are actually more accurate in displaying students’ understanding of the content, are more accurate on a schoolwide basis, and result in less guesswork on the teacher’s part. The confusion of what separates a 94 and a 93.8 are lost, as the grading scale is much smaller and more precise.
There was also focus on differentiation in the gradebook and on report cards. Gradebooks should reflect students understanding of content mastery, not just numbers and checks for completion. If gradebooks are altered to record students’ progress with the content, than teachers will better understand where they need to change units and focus more heavily, so that all students are fully understanding the material.
Table of Contents
Sarah
The thing that these chapters had in common was that they talked about assessments and how to record assignments on report cards and in a grade book. Chapter 11 introduced the concept of recording 60s in the grade book for missing work instead of zeros which is currently the norm. The reason that we should do this as teachers is because recording zeros make grades inaccurate. The zero also distorts the final grade since a zero is so devastating. The book as that it isn't cheating since you are still recording an F. It is also better to change it to a 60 especially if it happens only once or in the beginning of the grading period since we should be grading on a trend. This chapter also talks about grading gifted students. In this chapter I learned that the higher grade should always be recorded. A high grade should mean that they mastered the regular level and the advanced level material. If the teacher records the higher grade there should be a comment saying if this grade is for the regular level or the advanced level. If it is for the regular level then a grade for the advanced level should be left in the comment section. If a student is in an honors class then it is best for a teacher to record the grade that goes against the higher standards even if it is not the higher grade. The last thing that I learned from this chapter is about recording grades for late work. What the teacher records as the grade should depend on whether it is occasional or chronic. If a student always hands in work on time then the teacher should work with the student and let the student turn in the work without deducting points. If it is always occurring then a late penalty may be needed. However, in this case the teacher should record one grade for the mastery and another grade with the late penalties. Chapter 12 talked about the difference between the 100 - point scale and the 4.0 - scale. I learned that the smaller the scale the more alike the grade is between teachers and schools. The point values on smaller grading scales are also more directly correlated to the defined criteria and they provide better feedback. Teacher are also less likely to fudge the numbers with small grading scales. I learned that larger scales are more subjective than smaller grading scales. Chapter 13 talked about different ways to organize a grade book. One of the ways was to group assignments by standards, objectives, or benchmarks which means the teacher would have to record the grade more than once if it covered more than one standard. Another way was to list the assignments by dates which I thought would be most useful. Chapter 14 talked about report card formats. The main thing that I got out of this chapter was that the report cards should be responsive to students' experiences and they should reflect the differentiated practices that were provided by the teacher.Katelin
Grading is a concept that is really hard for many and I believe it will be hard for me in my classroom to know what is really the best way to grade a student and how to be the best I can at it. The chapters made the point that we differentiate in teaching the class, so why should we not differentiate in gradebooks? This was never really a way that I looked at grading, but I do believe that it makes sense to think this way. To me, I never saw much of a problem with putting a 0 in for an assignment in classes because it makes sense. How could I ever argue with a teacher when I was in school for giving me a zero on an assignment if I did not do it? Yes, it was hard to fight with zeros in the grade book because it brought your grade down, but I had not done it so I thought it was just a consequence. After reading this though it does make sense that a student should not get zero because it really does not represent their overall grade in the end. It poses the question though, what is the best grade to give them then? If a student does an assignment and does really poorly on it to earn the grade of a 60, why should the student who did not even pass it in earn a 60 also? That just does not make sense. I do think that I will come up with a system to try not to put zeros in the grade book though and not deducting so much for a late assignment because of the same reasons. I want the student to complete the work, not think it does not count because it is two weeks late, because it does. Rubrics are nice and all, and I understand why teachers like them so much, but I feel like students can lose points easily on a rubric and not get partial credit for some things. I like the idea of having a grade book that was grading by date to see the growth in students though. I believe it is important to remember where students start and end, because if they are not growing, there is something else happening we should be worried about.Shane
Chapter 11 of FIAE discusses common grading issues that many teachers go through in life. This pertains to my life as a future educator because teachers are going to have different ways of grading. Some students may be more gifted than others and if they don’t pass in work they should still be held to the same standards as others. I think as teachers we will need to keep an open mind when it comes to grading. I will end up holding kids to a high standard and just asking them to communicate with me. I think that we can make this clear in the syllabus and expectations. The other concepts would a grade point scale whether it’s a 100-point scale or if we use letter grades. One thing I can relate from the field with the FIAE readings would be hitting the standards. With my mentor we have talked about project based learning and different grading styles. This is not like effort based grading, which is a different story. The other thing the reading mentions is how to differentiated depending on the classroom. One last really good point I read and agreed with and have seen is staying on top of grades. I think as a student it is so frustrating to not know your grade until last minute. As a teacher if you put your grades in powerschool or the gradebook ASAP to avoid surprises and let the kids take initiative to get better. If they are willing to put in the work and get their grades up it shows who actually cares and who doesn’t. Being organized the better as a teacher. The last really important part of the reading I feel would be the 4 point scale. Often times you hear of it as GPA, but it is cropping up in other classes.Dominick
The overarching theme with all of these chapters was grading. Chapter 11 delves into the multiple problems that arise when trying to grade students work. The paramount here is how to grade late work. The chapter brings up two different ideas: one being giving the student a 60 and the other being a 0. Let me tell you why it is unreasonable to give a student a 0. Zeroes kill grades. If a student is about to make honor roll and accidentally slips up and forgets to do an assignment and that teacher goes on to give that student a zero dropping his/her grade to a C then the student will not make honor roll. Opposed to the other scenario of giving the student a 60 where the student then ends up with a B-. It's flat out unfair to give that student a zero because he/she forgot about it. Me personally I would probably have a different late policy: one that will allow students to lose somewhere between 5 and 10 points everyday. Grades are not black and white, the whole system is a gray area. Rick Wormeli brings up another point that really caught my interest and that's to do away with grades A, B, C, D, F and doing 1-4. I am sorry, but I do not agree with this at all. These letters give the student an idea of how they did in the class, where they need to improve and so on: there is no confusion. I appreciate Wormeli's innovative thinking, but I must say that I flat out disagree here. Chapter 14 brings forth another radical idea regarding the use of report cards. Wormeli suggests that it might be a good idea to change up the whole system by only having one report card for the year. This is an interesting idea once again, but one that I am not in favor of. Students need to know how they are doing throughout the whole course of the year that way they know what subjects they need to improve on.
Laura
All four of these chapters provided very useful insight to the grading process and policy that I may not have considered had I not read them. For example, I always thought that a zero was a zero and that it had the same effect in the gradebook as any other failing grade, because an F is an F. Maybe I thought this because I’m simply not a math person and my brain just doesn’t think in terms of averages and numbers and all that, or because I had so many teachers that said an incomplete assignment equaled a zero. I thought that giving a zero for a missing assignment made sense because zero stands for nothing: there was no assignment handed in. BUT, after reading Chapter 11 I can totally see how giving a zero for an incomplete assignment could really mess up a kid’s final grade and skew his level of mastery. In my classroom, I won’t give out zeros for this reason—grades should always indicate mastery, otherwise the evaluation we give our students is inaccurate. I do, however, feel that including comments on report cards is extremely necessary, because it is important to take things like effort, timeliness, and completion rate into consideration. If a student knows that homework isn’t graded in any way shape or form, they are less likely to take it seriously. For this reason, I will include a separate grading criteria beyond mastery when I am assessing my students. I will also try to use a smaller grading scale whenever possible, as suggested in Chapter 12, because it is more useful and can provide better feedback. In terms of the different types of gradebook formats presented in Chapter 13, I personally liked the format that grades according to standards. Not only are standards becoming more prominent in schools, I think that this format allows more specificity to student mastery and are therefore more useful, insightful, and less subjective than categorizing mastery based on assessment type. Of course, I understand that this format will not work all the time, and it is important to be flexible and tailor gradebook formats to student needs and course objectives. (I also really liked the topics-based gradebook approach because it connects topic to assignments and is quite specific.) In terms of report card formats, I simply couldn’t decide which I liked best; I think it will depend on my students and the school I am teaching in.
Rhi
Chapters 11-14 in FIAE largely focus on grading in the classroom. There are several methods that are suggested to influence your grading, but one that really stood out to me was using a 60 in place of anything below a 60. I don’t think there is any benefit in a student knowing they scored lower than a 60 on an assignment. Failing is failing, and maybe instead of writing the students 32 on the test, write them a note to meet with you. Another method is grading by weight of assignment, not by numbers. For example, an essay would carry more grading weight than a quick write homework assignment. So if a student misses the textbook assignment, that failed grade does not impact in the same way a missed essay does. This is how most of my teachers graded our work throughout high school and has been carried on throughout my college years, so I would definitely like to keep this method within my future classes.I feel grading is a very important topic to discuss in a classroom. It is also important to keep students in the loop about their grades. Why they receive certain grades, how they can improve, where their strengths and weaknesses are, etc. There are so many different aspects to grading, late work, weighted grades, deductions, grade books/keeping track of grades, and other aspects that I do not yet know but will soon need to consider. I think that at the end of the day, an assignment should be graded more on its content than it’s ability to follow guidelines, although that has importance as well. I think that students should be focused on understanding the content and completing the assignment, than completing the technicalities of an assignment. I think this has a lot to do with why students do work for the grade and not to understand the material. If students had less guidelines and put more effort into making quality work that showed mastery, we’d have students who are better off with their learning. I would much rather have paper that is 2 pages shy of a length requirement with quality thought and full of content, than a paper that is the required length but says nothing of importance to what the class had been learning. Students and teachers are too focused on quantitative information, than qualitative. Both want to know how to grade an assignment and what the final grades will be, rather than understanding the information being presented.
Cory
All of these chapters talked about grading, but each with their own spin on it. Chapter 11 talked about the main issues that teachers face when they think about grading. Chapter 12 talked about different kinds of scales teachers use to grade their students. Chapter 13 talked about the different kinds of grade books that a differentiated classroom can use. Finally, chapter 14 focused on the different kinds of report cards schools can use instead of the traditional one. There were quite a few points in these chapters that were very debatable; the information was either hit or miss for me. One of the biggest misses came from chapter 11. Here the author talked about giving 60’s instead of 0’s. I understand what they are saying; they should give 60’s because it more accurately reflects the student’s actual grade. It also matches the 10 or 11 point scale of the A’s, B’s, and C’s. But I personally don’t agree with this. Students shouldn’t be given credit for an assignment that they never completed, which is why a zero is appropriate. If you give them a 60, then they are more likely to not do their assignment because there are fewer repercussions. But my biggest issue with this stems back to the fact that they can’t get credit for something they never completed; if they didn’t do it, then they have shown no mastery, whether or not that mastery of the topic is actually there. But there were some cool ideas that the author put forward that I really liked. For example, I liked some of the grade book ideas, especially listing the assignment by date and time. For me, my mind tends to think very chronologically. I may seem to be very unorganized, but I see the pattern that I leave my stuff in, and it generally is based on when I put it in the folder or in the pile. I remember the order in which I put something there, and based on that I can easily find when others seem to be confused by it. This is probably rather similar to the gradebook I would like using in my classroom.
Cooper
The final 4 chapters of Fair Isn’t Always Equal focus on grading and some of the issues that come up in grading. The issue I found the most interesting was the prospect of putting a sixty into the gradebook rather than a zero for incompleted work. This is something I think we all as students have run into one time or another. The difference between not doing an assignment at all and doing a poor enough job to fail an assignment is astronomical in terms of grading and that can be extremely damaging to a student. For example a student could complete an assignment and earn a 100 and show a true mastery of a subject then fail to turn in the next assignment and earn a 0 giving him or her an average of 50 which on the surface would indicate that the student does not understand the material. Conversely a student could fail both assignments with 60s on each and earn a better average than the student who showed mastery of the concepts. While there is something to be said about being able to show the initiative to complete assignments on time, this type of system isn’t set up to reflect understanding and that can certainly be problematic. One of the chapters proposes a smaller grading scale and I think that is definitely one solution to this problem. In a traditional grading scale (0-100) there is a 11 or 10 point margin for each passing letter grade while there is a 60 point margin for failing grades. When the margin for failure is this large of course that will be reflected in student’s grades especially when a zero is entered into the gradebook as it 60% away from passing. Making the scale smaller helps to relieve these sorts of issues if there is a 1-5 scale where a 5 is an ‘A’ and a 1 is a ‘F’ we see a much more appropriate relationship between mastery and grade. I think conceptually we have to move away from the idea of failing at varying degrees, if as instructors we feel comfortable saying a student failed to understand the material they should receive a ‘F’ but to say that the majority of a 1-100 scale should represent different ways of failing not only sends the wrong message but it also interferes with the grading system as a whole.
Sara
In these chapters the main focus is grading. From what we grade, how we grade and why we grade. In chapter 11 we look at the big controversy between giving students a 0 or a 60. Before reading this chapter I never really understood why and how a student received a 60 if they did not do the work. It seemed not fair to students who try and did not represent how they students are actually doing. After reading the chapter I now feel the opposite as I did before reading the chapter. Especially after seeing the math and looking at different scenarios I can see why it makes sense for a teacher to give a student a 60 instead of a 0. If the other letter grades only span 11 points, why should a failing grading spread 50 or 60 points? If a student receives a 60 or 0, in terms of the letter grade, what is the difference? The answer is there is none. Bother grades would be an F and without the number value attached we would have no way of know which score the student received. When averaging how the student has done over a time period it seems fair to put in a 60 rather than a 0.When reading about grading scales and gradebooks I found myself thinking about how my mentor teacher did things in his classroom. He did use a grading scale out of 100, test and quizzes were graded independently but were then turned into percentage out of 100. I think in my classroom I will do something similar. It seems an appropriate way to grade things and the most logical. As for the gradebook I think I will divide things up by lesson topic, but also by standard. Lesson topic will allow me to look at the lesson as a whole and see how the student did with the topic. Dividing it by lesson will also make it easy to divide it by standard. This will make it easy to communicate with administration, parents, and the student, on what the student needs to work on in the class.
Lydia
These four Chapters are based on how a teacher should grade and what is a fair way to grade in a differentiated way. It is not always fair to give students letter grades or grade on a 4.0 scale because it doesn’t show how the student progressed throughout the quarter or even throughout the school year. The book also discusses if it is fair to give a zero or can you just give a student a sixty because they are both considered to be an F in the grade book. This will not show their true potential and growth because the zero will make it hard for the student to raise their grade even if they are getting better grades the rest of the year. It is not fair to penalize a student for the whole year when they have only gotten a zero on one assignment. This will affect students in the classroom because they will feel like it could be too hard to bring the grade up. By getting discouraged the student could shut down and choose not to do any more homework for the rest of the quarter or even the rest of the year.Also mentioned was grading scales and what is fair to use when using a grading scale and are number grades a poor way to show if a student is getting an A or an F. The number grade could show them that they are so close to getting a higher grade that the students could ask the teacher if there is any way to change it. This will affect me because it shows that the teacher should not be focused on the number of points that they get however I should focus on how the student did to improve from the last lesson or assessment. This also is reflected in the student’s report card which makes parents want to compare their child to another child in the class. Because of the number grading system parents want an easy to look at grade of how their child is doing. They typically don’t think about how their child has improved over the course of the class they mainly focus on if they are better than someone else in the class. It isn’t fair for the student or the teacher to have to be restricted to letter and number grades.
Cheyenne
These chapters focused on grading scales and differentiation in gradebooks. There is a huge problem in the way many teachers are recording their grades, that results in the grades not being accurate to student mastery or progress. A big focus in chapter 11 is the concept of replacing zeros with 60s. Zeros are such a devastating grade when used on a 100 point scale, that when an A student doesn’t do a single assignment, the zero will being their entire final grade down almost two letter grades. This is not an accurate representation of their level of mastery, whereas changing the zero to a 60 would be a much more accurate representation. This is not cheating, as some people would suggest, because a 60 is still a failing grade. If a student routinely does not do their work, they will still receive and F. But substituting zeros for 60s results in a far less devastating grade drop to those students that do their work.That being said, these chapters also discussed how the 100 point scale is inherently flawed. The current 100 point scale that is being used in most places gives A-D only 10 points per letter grade, and 60 points for an F. That’s over half a chance of getting an F, and it’s extremely skewed. Chapter 12 suggests that a smaller grading scale, such as the 4.0 scale is a better representation of students’ mastery. There is a warning, though, that parents and students might not understand why a 4.0 scale is better. It is too easy to associate each number with a letter grade and parents and students might wonder why a teacher wouldn’t just put down the associated letter grade. But these smaller grading scales are actually more accurate in displaying students’ understanding of the content, are more accurate on a schoolwide basis, and result in less guesswork on the teacher’s part. The confusion of what separates a 94 and a 93.8 are lost, as the grading scale is much smaller and more precise.
There was also focus on differentiation in the gradebook and on report cards. Gradebooks should reflect students understanding of content mastery, not just numbers and checks for completion. If gradebooks are altered to record students’ progress with the content, than teachers will better understand where they need to change units and focus more heavily, so that all students are fully understanding the material.